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Few people driving along Davenport Rd. near Bathurst St. spare a thought for the small building sitting on the north side of the road in Davenport Square Park.

More than 150 years ago, they would have been flagged down and forced to stop, because it was one of several places along Davenport where travellers were required to pay a toll.

The cottage that sits in the park has been restored over the past few years by a community group and with luck should be open this summer as a museum. It stands as a reminder that when it comes to tax collection, what's old is new again.

A few weeks ago, a volunteer blue-ribbon panel looking at ways to put Toronto on a better financial footing raised the idea of road tolls on the Don Valley Parkway, Gardiner Expressway and 400-series highways. The panel figured tolls could raise $700 million a year that could be used to improve transit. Premier Dalton McGuinty and Transportation Minister Jim Bradley were quick to say they're happy to help out with transit, but dead set against the idea of tolls.

In the mid-1800s, McGuinty's predecessors leaned the other way. As Upper Canada grew and York became bustling Toronto, the colonial administration had a limited tax base and a vast area to administer open to settlement. So they looked to private enterprise to build and maintain roads. Firms bid for contracts to build sections of thoroughfare, paid a fee to the government and recouped their investment through the tolls.

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One prized stretch was along Davenport, which had been part of an Indian trail linking the Humber and Don rivers. Fur traders later used the route and the trail eventually became a rough road. By 1840, the 13-kilometre road between the two rivers had five tollgates. Other toll roads in and out of the city included Yonge, Dundas and Bloor Sts.

The Community History Project has restored the third tollgate along Davenport.

Jane Beecroft, the group's president, says paying tolls was as unpopular then as now. For the toll keeper, the task of collecting the cash could be everything from challenging to downright dangerous. Travellers would try to get off the road and use side streets to get around the gate, creep by in the dead of night, or when caught just refuse to pay.

Often, they were persuaded by other means, which sometimes brought both parties to court. Local historian Ross Robertson noted that as a rule the toll keeper settled his own quarrels "as neither he nor his employers had much liking for police court proceedings."

Beecroft says the toll keepers were poorly paid and lived with their families in the tiny cottages, bearing the brunt of anger that should have been directed at the owners of the road.

"There was one tollgate that was burned down five times," she says.

The last of the city tollgates was removed in 1895, and it wasn't until a century later, during a recession, that NDP Premier Bob Rae brought the idea back. He approved the construction of Highway 407, letting a consortium build and maintain it, in exchange for the tolls.

In 1999, Conservative Premier Mike Harris gave the group a 99-year lease in exchange for $3.1 billion. Two years ago, Premier McGuinty unsuccessfully sued to wrest control of the highway back in public hands.

Today the 407 ETR owners charge, on average, 19 cents per kilometre to drive the highway. In 1851, the Gore and Vaughan Plank Rd. charged 6 pence for every vehicle drawn by two horses. Cut the horsepower in half, and a single horse and cart was 3 pence. If you travelled on foot with up to 20 cattle or sheep, it cost just a penny.

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